


It's a contact sport

by CheapLemonIceLolly



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Developing Relationship, M/M, Poor Life Choices, am I just stealing all the tags from the original fic?, and making out a lot, beat reporter rpf, dealing with emotions by not acknowledging them, well they are appropriate tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-19 06:18:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14231148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheapLemonIceLolly/pseuds/CheapLemonIceLolly
Summary: Mikko can’t avoid the press entirely, even if he’d like to; a certain amount of involvement comes with the job, with being professional.  Even so he doesn’t think about them an awful lot, not normally.  He has a job to do, and so do they, and for the most part he does his job better if he ignores the way they do theirs.  He definitely does his job better if he doesn’t go out of his way to read anyone else’s account of it; the only accounts of his work that matter are his own, and those of the coaching staff, and his teammates.But it’s not really true that he doesn’t think about them at all.  Some of them he definitely thinks about, sometimes.Well.  One of them.





	It's a contact sport

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bestliars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bestliars/gifts).
  * Inspired by [looking for a good story](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7541947) by [bestliars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bestliars/pseuds/bestliars). 



> Hello bestliars! Thanks for giving me such a richly detailed fic to work with, I hope you like what I’ve done with your story here. 
> 
> One of the things that I thought was really clever about your fic was how the journalistic-style prose keeps the “action” at arm’s length; even off the record Mike’s insights into his developing relationship with Mikko are often vague and intriguing rather than laying out all the details of what went down. I got rather taken with the thought that a writer is going to think about things in a more cerebral, analytical way whereas an athlete will have a more physically-oriented understanding of his interactions with other people. Which is an intellectual way of saying I filled in some of the sexy bits from the middle :P I took a snapshot of the romance and tried to look at it from that sort of blood-and-guts-and-visceral-feelings perspective instead. But many of the fic characterisations I have seen of Mikko have a pretty cerebral and sort of careful side, so that seeped in a bit too.
> 
> I definitely don’t go here most of the time - I knew very little about the Wild before I read your fic and had never heard of Mike before! - so I really hope I managed to do their characters justice!

Mikko is worried.

No, worried is the wrong word. More like...troubled. Or just _pensive_. He’s got things weighing on his mind.

Not about the way the season is going, although of course that’s...not great. But that’s just becoming par for the course now; not that it doesn’t wear on you, but you settle into a groove eventually, just let that unhappy, unsettled feeling of losing and hating it seep into your bones. Probably, as the captain, he should feel more urgent about that than he does; probably he would if he weren’t otherwise preoccupied.

But no, that’s not what he’s pensive about. Losing is not the thing that’s really nagging at him, the thing that has him lying awake in his bed, staring at the ceiling, idly opening and closing his hands in the too-warm sheets while he waits hopelessly for sleep to come. What’s on his mind isn’t hockey, but...well, journalism.

Right, it’s an odd thing to be lying awake thinking about, he realises that.

Mikko can’t avoid the press entirely, even if he’d like to; a certain amount of involvement comes with the job, with being professional. Even so he doesn’t think about them an awful lot, not normally. He has a job to do, and so do they, and for the most part he does his job better if he ignores the way they do theirs. He definitely does his job better if he doesn’t go out of his way to read anyone else’s account of it; the only accounts of his work that matter are his own, and those of the coaching staff, and his teammates. 

But it’s not really true that he doesn’t think about them at all. Some of them he definitely thinks about, sometimes. 

Well. One of them.

It’s different with Russo, with _Mike_ , Mikko thinks. It’s impossible to forget his role, that he’s there to catalogue and even criticise, Mikko and his team first and foremost, but in a way he’s become part of the furniture of the place, to Mikko. He’s become almost like a friend.

No, okay, that’s...that’s a foolish idea. They have a cordial professional relationship. That’s all. You probably can’t be friends with a reporter, not even one you’ve known for years, not even one you joke with, whose obsessive coffee drinking habits you’ve accidentally memorised after so many road trips and whose familiar face and voice sometimes seem like a touchstone put there to ground you in the hectic atmosphere of pressers and locker room scrums.

But, Mikko reasons to himself, watching the digital clock on the bedside table flick over from 1:00 to 1:01, that isn’t really accurate either. It’s not like they work together directly; Mike could do his job without ever speaking to Mikko, though maybe not as thoroughly, and Mikko could definitely do his job without ever even _thinking_ about Mike, and most of the time he does. And they aren’t exactly friends in the normal sense, because they don’t spend time together that isn’t work time for both of them, and they don’t really talk about things that aren’t hockey. But Mike has his phone number, that’s not particularly traditional. Yes, he has it because they arranged that phone interview that one time, but Mikko saved Mike’s number in his phone too, and it’s not like he needs it for anything, it just felt nice to have it.

(The contact just says “Mike,” he hasn’t keyed in Mike’s full name or any other identifying things. He’s not sure now whether that’s plausible deniability or if it’s because he doesn’t need any more details to know which Mike it is, which would really be the opposite of plausible deniability, whatever that may be.)

Mikko may not be a _journalist_ (he rolls his eyes at the empty bedroom even as he thinks it) but he’s still perceptive, he notices things.

He notices that Mike is careful about delineating _normal_ and _appropriate_ contact between a reporter and his habitual subject (that’s the whole team, technically, but sometimes it feels like Mikko especially), but that he’s a little more flexible than other reporters sometimes. Maybe that’s just familiarity. He notices that they’ve both grown more familiar with each other over time, and it’s understandable enough, they’ve both been in Minnesota for years together, but it doesn’t feel like _just_ that. It’s that familiarity that let Mikko think of them as friends.

He notices that Mike _looks_ at him. Well, of course he does, when Mikko’s answering questions everyone’s looking at him, that’s kind of the point. But Mike doesn’t just look because Mikko’s is the centre of attention, he _looks_ , intently, like he’s cataloguing the lines of Mikko’s face. Sometimes there’ll be a dozen people all asking questions and Mike won’t even say anything but Mikko will sense him louder than anyone else in the room, like a searchlight focused on Mikko’s face. It ought to be unnerving, and it shakes him a little, sometimes, but not in a bad way. It makes everything feel sharp, heightened. It feels like they’re the only people in the room.

That’s definitely a foolish line of thinking, though. It is probably Mikko’s imagination, and probably says more about Mikko himself than about Mike or anyone else.

He turns restlessly. The bedsheets feel too hot, cloying, like he’s feverish even though the room isn’t that warm. It’s making it even harder to get to sleep, and now the clock says it’s half past one. He needs to stop thinking about this.

He and Mike aren’t friends, except that they are, except that maybe they’re really something different altogether. And Mikko can’t stop thinking about it.

*

The season sucks.

He know it, the team knows it, the coaching staff know it. The reporters clustered around him, thrusting their recorders and cameras and iphones in his face and barking questions at him after the exhausting 8-1 loss to Montreal, they definitely know it. They feel like vultures circling. Not even Mike’s face in the throng is comforting today. If anything it’s worse; with all the messiness in Mikko’s head right now, feeling like Mike is there not to encourage or thoughtfully analyse but to attack, like every other know-it-all sports journalist, only makes him feel confused and frustrated.

Don’t read your own press, it’s rule one of being a professional athlete. Even the reporters who work with the team all the time, who you’d think would have some degree of loyalty, of care for the players as people, even they can get in your head if you let them. So, Mikko tries not to let them.

But he’s stubborn, and a little bit proud, and he can’t help but lash out occasionally. Actually lashing out isn’t even the right way to describe it, because he tries to be measured when he’s answering questions, even when they’re questions he hates. And it’s not like he and everyone else on and around the team doesn’t know they’re a mess right now, it’s not like they need some guy with a field recorder and a laptop to tell them that what they’re doing isn’t working. The constant negativity is annoying, and losing is already annoying enough. So when Mike asks him one of his good old pointed questions - if he feels that the team's given up or emotionally deflated with the reality that this is going to be another early spring - Mikko feels something inside him rear up, irritated and defensive.

"I don’t believe we give up at all," he bites back. "I think the effort’s been there every single game. I know there’s a lot of…” he pauses, searches for the right word, a word he can actually say without getting into trouble. A lot of... “ _people_ who's questioning us, who’s been questioning after every single loss we always have, but we have to learn to deal with that. We can't worry about that. We can't worry what people write about us or talk about us. It’s a matter of these guys in the room.” He can see Mike pressing his lips tighter together with every word, until his mouth is just a straight, white line. “As long as we believe in each other, that’s all that matters. It’s not up to us what you guys write or people talk about."

He knows that struck a nerve, because Mike is practically bristling. Well, fine. Mikko feels bristly himself. Finally the PR handler says, “That’s all for today, thank you everyone,” and lets him leave, and Mikko makes a break for freedom without looking back. He feels Mike’s eyes on him all the way across the room anyway.

*

He runs into Mike in the parking lot, and sets his jaw all ready to walk straight past him.

“Better luck next time,” Mike says sweetly, and it’s _pointed_ ; Mikko can _feel_ it like Mike’s just reached over and jabbed him in the ribs with his finger. So, yes, he was right before, and no, Mike didn’t like it.

Mikko can’t help it; he flinches, just slightly. He should probably just pretend he didn’t hear, or give Mike the blank stare he’s expecting, or even the open irritation he’s clearly pressing for. He’s taken it personally, the things Mikko said about the press, which is exactly what Mikko meant him to do but now it’s happened it only seems to make everything feel worse. His nerves are jangling like an out-of-tune piano. 

It’s like they’re having a fight, him and Mike, only they’re not really having it with each other, and Mikko hates that feeling of holding each other at arm’s length like this, all passive aggressive sniping and not addressing anything directly. It’s the worst thing about Mike’s stupid _professionalism_ ; he thinks he’s making it easier but he’s really making it more confusing, and worse. They’re mad at each other, and that’s something that comes from _feeling_ not from indifference. Anger is passionate, not professional.

So, Mikko decides to address it. Passionately.

He crosses the space separating them in a couple of strides and then he’s looking down at Mike, watching his eyes widen fractionally, seeing the little intake of breath that parts his lips.

Sometimes Mike likes to push, like the rigid boundaries of his job chafe him and he’s longing to break them, and maybe that’s what this is. He’s not supposed to get mad at Mikko, because he’s not supposed to care what Mikko thinks. When he pushes, the professional boundaries don’t break, but sometimes they bend a little, moments of sarcasm, subtly affectionate even when he’s critical; it _is_ friendly the way any long standing professional relationship is friendly, but sometimes, Mikko thinks…

He hadn’t wanted to name it but he has to, now. Sometimes it’s been almost _flirtatious_ too.

There’s nothing subtle or playfully flirtatious now about the way Mike’s almost glaring up at him, practically vibrating with unspent tension, but it’s charged all the same. There’s definitely nothing professional about the way Mikko sways forward and Mike rushes in to meet him, about the little involuntary noise he makes against Mikko’s mouth when they finally come together, like all the breath rushing out of his body at once. It feels like a dam breaking, for Mikko too, like releasing an enormous head of pressure he hadn’t even noticed building up, and he presses Mike back into the side of his car and kisses him and kisses him, letting the privacy of the shadows and the late hour make him bold, and the way Mike’s clutching at him like a life preserver.

Maybe it won’t happen again; it almost certainly shouldn’t happen again. But at least for now this tiny stolen moment is the best thing that’s happened to Mikko all month. All season maybe. It feels much better than being angry. For now he’s going to savour it.

*

It does happen again, when they’ve won their second in a row for what feels like the first time in forever, and Mikko’s so relieved he feels giddy, lightheaded and stupid with it. He finds Mike by accident, on his way to the parking lot again, and finds his own smile echoed on Mike’s face. It feels inevitable, like they were drawn to each other without even trying, and it just seems like a natural progression to keep going, to fit their matching smiles together and pour all Mikko’s relief into another kiss.

Again it feels like a release, like venting a pressure cooker and letting the heat and pressure scream out of him, but this time it’s happiness and not resentment. It’s even better than the last time.

Mike’s probably relieved too; it must be almost as exhausting to write about a failing team as it feels to captain one. But as soon as they part, before he’s even let go of the front of Mikko’s jacket, his face is already tightening.

“You can’t just…” he shakes his head, laughs in a flustered kind of way. “This is such a bad idea.”

Mikko wouldn’t say he disagrees, but that doesn’t stop him kissing Mike again anyway. He’s got precious little to feel good about this season, bad idea or not.

*

The third time barely feels like a choice. It just happens.

“We have to be professional about this,” Mike says, not looking at Mikko. It’s like he’s _afraid_ to look at him, which is honestly ridiculous, because he had his tongue in Mikko’s mouth less than a minute ago, but it’s a sequence Mikko’s starting to get used to. Mike wants things - they both do - Mike gives in to wanting things - they both do - then Mike regrets giving in to wanting things and needs a minute to compose himself again. It’s a reliable pattern.

Mikko’s reliable too. He doesn’t regret a second of it, and honestly he thinks Mike is kind of a fool; it seems like he thinks wanting is a failure on his part, that it’s something he should be able to control and surpass. Mikko makes a living out of making his body do exactly what he wants it to, when he wants it to, and he knows with damning certainty that it doesn’t work like that. But he stays quiet, and lets Mike put his professional mask back on, and lets him go without making a fuss.

Still, for all that he rails against the whims of his body, there’s nothing professional about the way Mike looks at Mikko sometimes, even in the middle of a scrum where other people can see. It’s like he’s barely listening to anything that’s going on, just staring, just memorising the exact colour of Mikko’s eyes or something else strange and poetic. Mikko is not a poet but he knows Mike, or he thinks he does.

Maybe nobody else will notice, but Mikko notices. He’s observant.

Mikko says something, a wry little joke, he doesn’t even think about it enough to remember what it is that he says, just to see if he can make Mike crack a smile through the crowd of interviewers. He does. And the familiarity of it prods at something in Mikko. It makes him come to a decision. 

He waits by Mike’s car, hands stuffed in his pockets. When Mike sees him he pretends there’s nothing special about it, but he can’t hide the way his steps falter or the way he swallows reflexively when he meets Mikko’s eyes.

“We should get coffee,” Mikko says seriously, and it lands kind of heavy, but he’s tired and just naturally awkward and too worn out to try and pretend he isn’t. It’s been a long fucking season, not as long as it should have been, and it’s finally over. It’s not like Mike doesn’t know all that about him anyway. 

Mike looks like he wants to say no, but...no, actually, he looks like he thinks he _ought_ to say no. But he doesn’t want to, so that isn’t what he says.

“Yeah,” he says, and nods. “Alright.”

Mikko feels strangely calm as he drives to the coffee shop they agreed on, miles from the rink where they won’t run into anyone. It seems like he should be nervous or something, but all the worry that once tormented him about this feels distant now; it’s not gone, exactly, but it’s packed up in a box where he doesn’t have to look at it. He’s committed to this trajectory, now. No turning back.

Mike seems to find comfort in the formula of ordering coffee and finding a table in the corner where it’s quiet, like he’s about to conduct an interview. One of those cosy, faux-casual interviews that are supposed to relax you and draw warm, genuine anecdotes out, but still structured and familiar to him, to both of them really. But in an interview Mike would be asking all the questions and Mikko would be trying not to answer the ones he doesn’t like, and that’s not what this is. Once they’re sitting down, and there’s no notepad or field recorder to keep up the facade, Mike wraps both hands around his coffee and inhales deeply, like he’s drawing strength from it. Mikko watches him and raises an eyebrow.

“I’m not that scary, am I?” he says, amused. It’s a funny turning of the tables, he thinks. Mike’s probably not used to being in the spotlight, not controlling the conversation. But Mikko doesn’t want to control the situation either. “It’s fine,” he says soothingly. “Let’s just...just talk.”

“What do you want to talk about?” Mike says, because maybe he doesn’t know how to converse with Mikko without asking him a question. Mikko shrugs.

“Anything,” he says. “Tell me about your summer plans.”

So they just talk. They talk and try to pretend, for a little while, that they’re just two men who get to do this, out in the open, two men with ordinary jobs that don’t feel like they’re pitted against each other, that don’t force them to keep each other at arm’s length. Or maybe two men who have ordinary feelings about each other, colleague to colleague, nothing complex or taboo.

It’s amazing how you can know a person for so many years and not really know that much about them, even when they’ve made an open book of you in some ways. It feels good to turn the tables, but it feels even better to just be companionable, off the record. To meet Mike as just a person and learn about him in this open, familiar sort of way. A person whose mouth he’s tasted, more than once. Whose hands he’s felt clinging to him. Mikko hasn’t forgotten.

He tasted like coffee and desperation last time, if desperation can be said to have a flavour. Maybe Mikko was just projecting that, looking for the mirror image of his own feelings in Mike, to make them feel more manageable, less out of control. Right now he watches Mike’s mouth as he talks and thinks he’d taste different this time; like coffee, of course, because when is he ever without it, but a sweeter, smoother blend, so much more relaxed.

Perhaps Mikko has a poetic side after all.

“I wrote a blog post about you,” Mike says, and Mikko tilts his head at him, because he doesn’t read Mike’s blog or any hockey blog unless someone tells him to. Mike coughs, like he’s trying to swallow the words before he has to say them. “Before we…the first time, I mean. Not about _that_ , but about...the things you said about reporters. About how it wasn’t up to you what we write about.” He pauses. “I was pretty mad.”

Mikko can imagine it, Mike hammering away at his laptop, fuelled by too much coffee and bubbling rage and a hurt he doesn’t know how to name or what to do with, then coming outside and baiting Mikko into kissing him, of all things. It makes him want to laugh, so he chuckles into his coffee cup.

“I probably shouldn’t read that,” he says, looking up with a smile that feels wry and crooked on his face.

“Probably not,” Mike agrees.

The table’s small, small enough that their knees bump together underneath it, small enough that it only takes the slightest movement for Mikko to reach out and brush his fingers over the back of Mike’s hand. The slightest movement that could look accidental to anyone who happened to be watching (not that anyone is watching) but he knows it’s clear as crystal to Mike. He knows because Mike chews his lip, hesitates for a moment, and then says:

“Do you want to get out of here?”

Mikko’s kind of impressed. It’s such a cheesy line but Mike delivers it without a hint of cynicism, and Mikko’s on his feet before he even answers in actual words.

“Where do you have in mind?”

They go to Mike’s place, Mikko following his car there because of course he has no idea where Mike lives. It feels surreal, that. Not half as surreal as following Mike through the front door and standing awkwardly in the entryway while he closes the door behind them, feeling too tall and big and like he isn’t supposed to be here. He feels that way for all of about ten seconds, until Mike grabs hold of him and crushes their mouths together, and Mikko makes a surprised noise and lets Mike press him urgently into the wall. He doesn’t know why he’s surprised, because he knew perfectly well what he was coming here for, but Mike usually just lets these things happen. This is new. Better.

Mikko kisses him back, takes hold of his hips and pulls him closer. He pushes away from the wall and walks Mike purposefully backwards down the corridor, not knowing where he’s headed but suddenly very determined to find a soft surface where he can get Mike horizontal. It doesn’t even need to be soft. A dining table. A counter top.

The dining table is a mess of papers and discarded coffee cups and books, and Mikko briefly considers sweeping them dramatically aside so he can throw Mike down on it, but he’s not really a dramatic sort of person. Instead he shoves Mike against the door frame and leaves just enough room between them for Mike to scrabble at the buttons of his shirt, just enough space between their lips to say, “Bed?”

“What?” Mike says breathlessly. He sounds just this side of overwhelmed and his face is flushed red, and Mikko takes a moment to cup his cheek with one hand and stroke the pad of his thumb over Mike’s lip.

“Bed,” he repeats. “Your bedroom, where is it?”

“Right. Yes. This way.”

Mike doesn’t seem to want to stop touching him; he’s got his hands inside Mikko’s open shirt, running over his chest and up and down his sides, and he turns his face up to be kissed as he steers Mikko a little clumsily around the dining table, around a corner and into a closed door. Mikko reaches behind himself for the door handle and feels Mike’s hand close over his.

“This is a bad decision,” he says, and it makes Mikko want to laugh because he doesn’t even pull away from Mikko’s lips to say it, just mumbles into his mouth like he’s hoping Mikko will swallow the words up and he’ll be absolved of deciding at all. It seems a little late for that.

“We can stop if you want to,” Mikko tells him, and he means it, even though he doesn’t want to. “But it doesn’t have to be a bad decision _or_ a good one. Maybe this just isn’t something you can analyse.”

Mike is the one who laughs at that, a little huff of air right in Mikko’s face. It makes his eyes glitter with mirth. “You’d be amazed what I can analyse,” he says. “I’m the MVP of overthinking.” But he fits their mouths together again anyway, and kisses Mikko like he means every bit of it, and like he never means to stop.

Mikko turns the door handle and the bedroom door opens, spilling them into the room, stumbling and clutching at each other.

It’s a point of no return, when Mikko reaches for Mike’s belt and deftly unbuckles it without breaking the kiss. The clunk of the heavy buckle hitting the floor is like an exclamation point, or a gunshot. But it’s not the first bad decision they’ve made together, and Mikko can sense it won’t be the last.

*

He wakes up on the wrong side of an unfamiliar bed with Mike sprawled across the other, not touching except for the single point where Mike’s foot is brushing his shin. The curtains are drawn but enough light makes it through the gap between them to paint a golden stripe across Mike’s bare shoulders. He looks odd without his glasses, which are folded on the bedside table; Mikko thinks his face looks as naked as the rest of him like this, soft and vulnerable and almost unrecognisable.

He finds he likes it.

He doesn’t regret anything. He checks the time. Soon he’ll need to go back to his house and pack for the flight home, start getting back into the hockey mindset for Worlds. Playing for Finland is always a different experience than playing for Minnesota, and he’s looking forward to it, to being part of a team fans can be excited about, to the speed and space of international ice. He’s ready to be there right now, to be there yesterday, even.

Soon he’ll need to get ready for that, but right now Mike is stirring, and Mikko watches him yawn and then stretch until his toes crack. Before Mikko leaves, they’ll have coffee together. Talk about Mikko’s hopes for the tournament, maybe, anything to avoid addressing the elephant in the room. Mikko doesn’t regret anything but he meant what he said last night about not analysing it. He doesn’t want to give it too much thought.

He definitely wants to do it again, if he ever has the chance.

Mike opens his eyes and a flurry of emotions chase themselves across his face so quickly Mikko can’t interpret them all before he’s smiling blandly, facade back in place. It feels like seeing him put his glasses back on, which he also does a second later.

“Good morning,” he says politely, like he’s about to start an interview. _Can you tell me what was going through your mind when you made that clutch move at the end of the blow job_ , Mikko thinks, and covers up his laugh with a yawn. He wants to kiss Mike very badly, but he doesn’t. Just smiles.

“Good morning,” he agrees. “Coffee?”

Yes, he thinks as he follows Mike out to the kitchen. He definitely wants to do this again. He’s going to make sure he gets the chance.


End file.
